Flash Fiction: He Called Her Name

Every time he called her name, she drowned. Limbs reaching involuntarily heavenward, she sank. Her lungs filled with no air, her mind slowly, surely, shut down. She suffocated on the breath she’d draw to respond. She’d forget her name, her age, her place of birth. Her tongue shifted laboriously, heavy and useless in her mouth, swollen as though allergic to Oxytocin.

He called her name and she tried to remember how to speak. Vaguely, she was aware of laughter, echoed by a circle of participants. The racket was distant, garbled, unworthy. The only sound she had enough room for was his voice. And he called her name. He called her name and she fell through space and time and the cadence of his voice rocked her gently to numbness.

He called her name and in a sudden panic, in an instant beat of realization her eyes fluttered open and she faced the class of twenty seven students, each one snickering and staring and pointing and waiting. Waiting for her to answer. The question was Othello or Pythagorean in nature, she wasn’t quite sure. Couldn’t remember through the haze still clouding her mind. She swallowed thickly and she looked at his face, into his eyes. She tried to forget the class, and focused. She opened her mouth to respond.

Every time he called her name, she drowned. And each time it was just a little bit harder to find her way back to the surface.